Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol **

Director: Brad Bird
Cast: Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Paula Patton, Simon Pegg
Michael Nyqvist, Vladimir Mashkov, Samuli Edelmann, Léa Seydoux
Anil Kapoor, Josh Holloway, Tom Wilkinson

To say plot is unimportant in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol would be like saying that Tom Cruise isn't trying too hard to prove he still matters. The film pretty much is an altar to why the 49-year old is as relevant as 20somethings who spend entire movies running to-and-from explosions showing their toned pecs and virile grins.
Cruise is back to play Ethan Hunt, in the fourth movie in the Mission: Impossible series -which have always suffered from a lack of homogeneity in terms of artistic vision - this time around he faces a crazy Russian scientist Hendricks (Nyqvist) who has decided to single-handedly start a nuclear holocaust.
Hunt and his team, conformed by tech genius Benji Dunn (Pegg who's here just for comedic relief), kick-ass agent Jane Carter (Patton) and the mysterious William Brandt (Renner), trek all over the world trying to stop Hendricks.
From skyscraper climbing in Dubai, to seducing loony lotharios in India, the film's major concern seems to be just how crazier and over the top can the situations get. At first, watching Cruise jump from Russian hospitals and survive explosions is a bit fun, but in a movie where even the title credits are too much, you have to wonder if they will ever stop and smell the flowers.
The action gets to be so much that the film can't help but end feeling like a live action version of Spy vs. Spy (wait, that already exists, right?) or a parody of an action movie.
When the team figure out they have to hack a server room in Dubai, Brandt reminds them that it's located in "the tallest building in the world", and you can't help but think "of course", before rolling your eyes and sipping on your diet soda.
For all its insanity which is unarguably well choreographed by the brilliant Brad Bird, the film can't help but feel utterly joyless at times. It's easy, and perhaps right, to blame Cruise for this feeling, given that this is his show and he must've been in control of everything that went on in it.
The supporting cast is quite good but more often than not you feel that they are just in it because they want to fit in with the popular kid. Patton for example, shows she has superb action heroine skills, but the story reduces her to being a "woman", meaning an agent with a brilliant future who can't help but fail because she gets her period. Renner similarly gets stuck with a shady character just so he won't be able to steal the movie from Cruise. Even if he's poorly written, the wonderful actor still plays Brandt with a wink.
It's slightly pleasant to see Cruise in top form, trying to atone for his lunacy period by doing what he always did best: entertain. Too bad he is so eager that he decided to employ every single trick in his hat. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol could've been an action landmark, instead it satisfies itself with being distracting.

Short Takes: "One Day" and "The Debt".

Even if it never makes justice to the book it's based on (the eponymous novel written by David Nicholls), One Day is an often delightful romance powered by pure star wattage and a great - albeit slightly gimmicky - concept. The film follows the relationship between Emma (Anne Hathaway) and Dexter (Jim Sturgess) over the course of two decades, but does so by showing what they do on the exact date they met. We see them grow from awkward college graduates to decently rounded adults; they survive destructive relationships, family tragedies, divorces, career and country changes etc. and the one thing that remains constant throughout is their love for one another.

Perhaps the novel's reach is a bit too ample to turn it into a small romantic comedy (it certainly would've been wonderful as a miniseries that took longer to flesh out Em and Dex better) because as it is, we often have a hard time knowing why the characters do what they do. Even if they never become mere archetypes - he of the fun-loving lothario and she of the obsessive control freak - we feel cheated, like we could've benefited more from knowing what they do on the dates we don't get to see.

Directed with a precise hand by Lone Scherfig (who follows the joyful style she used in An Education) the film has moments of marvel as well as scenes that seem to drag forever. Fortunately most flaws can be overlooked because of the performers. Sturgess is unusually passive, almost lacking in the exuberance needed to turn Dexter into a character we could hate and then fall in love with, however his quiet performance reveals that Dexter is a man who never knows himself fully (his scenes with Patricia Clarkson, who plays his mom, are violently delicate).

Hathaway - who sadly never mastered the required British accent - is all smiles and wide eyed contempt as Emma. As usual, Hathaway grabs a simple character and layers it with the kind of star quality few performers can add (only Julia Roberts lights up the screen with the same ease) while keeping a deep humanity that reaches to you beyond the screen. The film is by no means perfect (although the ending might just leave you weeping) but it works because of its utter sincerity. Few films nowadays are so straightforward about breaking your heart.

You gotta give it to John Madden: he's one versatile filmmaker! His constant traveling of genre to genre (he directed Shakespeare in Love and Proof) have turned him into the equivalent of a studio era director, who worked under producers and got little input to create his own authorial signature. With that said, he doesn't hit the mark in his espionage thriller The Debt, a decade spanning film that follows the lives of three former Mossad agents from their first big mission, to the fame it eventually brings them.
The spies are played by Jessica Chastain, Marton Csokas and Sam Worthington as young agents trying to catch a deranged Nazi surgeon in the 1970s. Their mature versions are played by Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson and Ciarán Hinds respectively (in a quite good casting decision). They all come together in their old age to settle a secret they've been living with for decades, the film then uses flashbacks to show us what marked and bonded them forever.
The main issue with the film is how Madden tries to trick us, only to then reveal how entire scenes are nothing but lies. This never works because in the film's context - which most certainly isn't an artistic exercise a la Antonioni - all the scenes seem to be fact based. His idea of toying with perception is indeed respectable but the execution is sloppy and often causes confusion (did we see right or were we dozing off mid-screening?).
Mirren is fantastic as usual but the best in show honor goes to Chastain who plays her character with an angsty vitality one would only attribute to someone like, well, Mirren. She conveys such a damaged past that we only have to see in her eyes to understand where she's coming from and why she's doing what she does. Few performances are this magnetic and exciting, anyone looking for a new action heroine, take note.

Grades:
One Day ***
The Debt **½

The Conspirator **½

Director: Robert Redford

Cast: James McAvoy, Robin Wright, Justin Long

Evan Rachel Wood, Johnny Simmons, Toby Kebbell

Tom Wilkinson, Norman Reedus, Alexis Bledel

Kevin Kline, Danny Huston

The assassination of Abraham Lincoln was undoubtedly one of the seminal events of the nineteenth century and history has made sure that we learn as much about Honest Abe as we can. His life has been the center of books, films and urban legends all of which culminate in the night where he was murdered by actor John Wilkes Booth.

Very few times have we been informed of what came to be afterwards and how one story in particular would shape the way of legal battles up to this very day. That story would be Mary Surratt's, played with fierce serenity by Robin Wright, a woman who was tried for conspiring in the assassination of President Lincoln.

While the story is supposed to concentrate on Surratt, director Robert Redford takes a more didactic approach and centers on her defending lawyer Fredrick Aiken (McAvoy), a Civil War veteran who's appointed by the army to defend someone everyone thinks is guilty.

The film deftly deals with the way in which public opinion can shape the outcome of a trial but more than that it leads us to wonder when and where is it right to bend the law, or if we even should consider doing it at all.

Redford, always the political instructor, makes the film about the way in which the army shattered the law in order to put on a charade to find themselves a scapegoat, Mary's guilt or innocence are never really on trial in the film (anyone watching the movie will think something entirely different) what the movie examines is the inconsistency with which governments provide so-called justice.

Unlike most of the films directed by Redford this one conceals its liberal agenda under a more restrained, almost theatrical style that might appeal those from dissenting political parties, as such it's a movie much more entertaining than say the disastrous Lions for Lambs however in delivering his essay Redofrd has once again forgotten to make his characters human.

He uses them to portray archetypes, we have the heroic Aiken, the villainous prosecutor (Huston) and he even gives Aiken a virginal love interest (Bledel of course) who juxtaposed with Surratt's more vamp-like daughter (none other than Wood) act like the angel and devil figures on the good lawyer's shoulders.

Props should be given to the always fascinating Wright who infuses Mary with a serene knowledge the rest of the film lacks. Redford doesn't give her character much to do but Wright taps into something primal and by the end of the film has evoked maternal love, demonic possession and manipulation with elegance and grace. Watch the way in which she can break your heart by remaining silent or the hatred she can invoke to her eyes. She makes us wish the rest of the movie lived up to her brilliant portrayal.

The Ghost Writer ***1/2

Director: Roman Polanski
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Olivia Williams, Kim Cattrall
Timothy Hutton, Tom Wilkinson, James Belushi, Robert Pugh
Jon Bernthal, Eli Wallach

Few living directors can muster the same kind of public attention that Roman Polanski attracts. More than countless other filmmakers, his life has always been marked by scandal and tragedy, making it a "public right" of sorts to try and decipher his latest work by way of what the audience knows about him.
Upon the release of The Ghost Writer in early 2010, Polanski was once again facing extradition charges and literally finished working on the film in prison.
It should come as no surprise that after watching this marvelously exciting political thriller, you wonder, even for a second, if Polanski didn't plan all that was happening to him.
After all, this film is proof that few filmmakers have mastered the delicate art of suspense in the way Polanski can. Every twist, line and move in The Ghost Writer feels perfect. He's an apt sorcerer and sets a mood from the opening shot of the film in which we see a ferry unloading its cargo.
Only one car is left behind, it belongs to Mike McAra, who turns up a few days later, drowned on the shore in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.
McAra was working as ghostwriter for Adam Lang (Brosnan), a former British Prime Minister, compiling his memoirs. His death forces the publishing company to find a replacement, they go with Ewan McGregor's nameless character (known as "the ghost" throughout the film), who currently has no familiar attachments and is practically a man without a past. This noir-ish detail sets the tone of what's to come.
The ghost is flown over to Massachusetts to work next to Lang who is staying there while the manuscript is completed. There the ghost meets the charismatic former PM (played by the debonair Brosnan), his unsatisfied wife Ruth (Williams) and his faithful assistant Amelia (the luscious Cattrall) who might be his mistress too.
On the day of the ghost's arrival, a former British minister accuses Lang of having ties with illegal extractions and torture of suspected terrorists. This puts the spotlight on them as the International Criminal Court begins investigating and the worldwide media becomes insane.
Immersing himself in the manuscript, the ghost begins to discover that perhaps Lang might not be as innocent as he seems and there might be something that could incriminate him in his book. So where should he go from that premise? Is he supposed to do the "right thing" and try to help authorities bring Lang to justice, should he help him clear his name, should he quit?
As the possible turns the story could take begin to rack up, so does the questioning that Polanski and co-writer Robert Harris (who also wrote the original novel) ignite.
The film at no moment tries to hide the fact that Lang is a version of Tony Blair and the events around him remind us of George W. Bush's administration, Cheri Blair's persona and Benazir Bhutto assassination among many other contemporary political events.
What differentiates The Ghost Writer from recent attempts of making political thrillers is that Polanski never forgets that a thriller must in fact thrill!
And everything in this movie seems to be conspiring against the ghost and his investigation. Most of the movie takes place in the midst of terrible weather but Polanski is too sly to have it represent the characters' darkness, in his movie the clouds terrify us because we never know what's behind them.
This is essentially why the film works in such unexpected ways; even if everything seems familiar and the plot isn't entirely groundbreaking, the mood more than makes up for it. There's a pervading sense of menace in every frame (and what frames does DP Pawel Edelman come up with!), in every cut, in Alexandre Desplat's mischievously macabre score and in the dialogues.
We are always waiting for something to happen and in this sense the film recalls some of Alfred Hitchcock's best work (think Rebecca by way of North by Northwest) but it also has a lot to say about art and history.
Particularly the way in which said art shapes history, for what is the ghost doing if not rewriting Lang's history? And what is Lang's issue if not his impossibility to be faithful to his own history?
But there is more than meets the eye and this is perhaps where preconceptions about Polanski enter the conversation.
As male driven as The Ghost Writer is, there is a sense that we're also being reminded of the women working behind the curtain. Watch how in several scenes, women are expertly framed in specific shots as if they are being puppet masters to the male actions closer to the camera.
Is Polanski winking at the conspiracy theories involving Barbara Bush and Hillary Clinton or is he paying homage to the way the women in his own life designed his own history?
What's true is that no other director could've made this movie and turn it into such a personal genre flick. Why? Because no other director could inspire the kind of debates he does. Stylistically this film is an upgrade of his own The Ninth Gate but thematically it approaches something darker in the vein of Chinatown. What would The Ghost Writer be without Polanski's own tragedies?
Ironically and perversely this movie reminds us that most of the time truth is more incredible than fiction.

Duplicity ***

Director: Tony Gilroy
Cast: Julia Roberts, Clive Owen
Tom Wilkinson, Paul Giamatti, Denis O'Hare
Thomas McCarthy, Carrie Preston

After the endless labyrinthine mind games of "Michael Clayton", anyone would've guessed writer/director Tony Gilroy was in for something a bit lighter. On the surface "Duplicity" seems to be just that, but look closer and you will find an even more twisted, character driven film that's absolutely relentless with the audience and even harder on itself.
It opens in Dubai where MI6 agent Ray Koval (Owen) seduces Claire Stenwick (Roberts) at a party. He ignores that she is CIA and wakes up eighteen hours later with a headache and some classified documents gone.
Upong finding her years later he melancholically reveals "the last thing I remember before passing out was thinking how much I liked you.".
Apparently she sorta feels the same and they reluctantly begin an affair (their trust issues rival the ones the actors shared in "Closer") . Flash forward a couple more years later, they both have quit their national agencies and have started working in corporate espionage.
They infiltrate rival cosmetic companies fighting for the release of a mysterious, revolutionary product, with the plan of getting the formula for themselves, selling it to the highest bidder and retire to a life of luxury.
With this basic premise Gilroy unfolds a complex, sometimes slightly confusing, game between the companies and the leads.
He exploits every single character and actor to the max, giving them some amazing dialogue and providing even the most conniving of them with a distinctive kind of swagger. Giamatti, all introverted cockiness and Wilkinson, pure evil corporate Zen, are perfect as the company tycoons who despise each other; and in one scene Carrie Preston almost steals the film from Julia herself as a horny travel agent.
But the best is obviously saved for Julia and Clive, who have undeniable sexual chemistry and bring to the screen an overwhelming sexiness tied with mistrust that makes the film worth the ticket.
Owen is all James Bond (with a bit of Clooney) as he follows this woman around in order to have her for himself, while dealing with the fact that he can't forget what he did to him.
Roberts, whose mere presence nowadays is enough of an event, does her character a la "Julia": all playfulness and awkward sensuality, but this time let's slip a lil' something extra (gasps! a flash of boob!) along with a more mature approach to acting.
In a wonderful scene as Claire rehearses a meeting with Ray, she teasingly asks "so you're directing me now?", in one of those postmodernist moments her image has become part of, we don't know if she's giving her character a nuance, or actually stating that she is Julia Roberts.
The same goes for the film which is so full of twists and turns that we don't really know what exactly is it trying to say.
Can it be about the troubles of consumerism? The danger/wonder of corporate evolution? Truth is that what Gilroy does best, besides messing up with your head, is conceal an ultimate truth in something that appears to be everything but. As with "Michael Clayton", which was arguably about the search for one's self in the midst of mid-life crisis, "Duplicity" is about the complicated nature of romantic relationships and what they're built upon.
Claire and Ray are essentially figuring out what they are in the midst of corporate wars, even the way the rival companies exaggerate their strategies is a metaphor of how couples tend to over dramatize everything, especially when it comes to trust.
Throughout the film it is suggested that Claire and Ray end up in these games because perhaps subcosnciously they want their relationship to fail and stick to what they know how to do best: their jobs.
Gilroy's Hitchcockian ability to layer a specific concept with genre conventions makes "Duplicity" the equivalent of a Katharine Hepburn/Cary Grant romantic comedy as if done by J.J. Abrams.
Unfortunately Gilroy screws the MacGuffin and by revealing something that remains fascinating only when unsaid, goes way over his head, as if trying to find the essence of what makes love what it is. He forgets that half the thrills are within the search.

Valkyrie **

Director: Bryan Singer

Cast: Tom Cruise

Kenneth Branagh, Tom Wilkinson, Carice van Houten

Thomas Kretschmann, Bill Nighy, Terence Stamp, Eddie Izzard

It takes but a slight knowledge of history to know how "Valkyrie" will end. The film chronicles the attempt to kill Adolf Hitler led by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (Cruise) on July 20th 1944.

Teaming with high rank members of the German Army Stauffenberg planned a coup that would use the Fuhrer's very own "Operation Valkyrie" to take over Germany and make a truce with the Allies putting an end to World War II.

When the key members of the army are played by character actors like Branagh, Stamp and Nighy the idea of the kind of prestige drama this could amount to would get any film lover salivating.

But when this remarkable team is led by Tom Cruise, it works in a completely different way. Not even attempting to have a German accent, Cruise doesn't make a clown out of von Staffenberg, because we never even get to see past the actor playing him.

Whenever Cruise tries to be serious and muster some sort of gravitas, all we really see is Tom Cruise wearing an eyepatch and trying to kill Hitler.

Rarely has the public perception of an actor affected so much the outcome of an entire movie, but it seems that deep down Cruise has come to terms with the fact that he's a movie star and if you stop taking the film as a serious historical piece and choose to view it as an action thriller the results can be obscenely entertaining.

Singer, who directs like a stock filmmaker under the studio system, just goes with the flow and lets his star shine.

The director's meticulousness is outstanding in the small flashes he let's us see, like the care he has taken in showing us bureaucratic and logistic methods of the era.

Since there is absolutely no regard for character growth and background, scenes with extras and unknown actors in small roles showing the chilling efficiency of the Nazi regime make for a treat.

Singer choreographs the action sequences with just as much care, giving the plot an actual tension even if you know how everything will end.

"Valkyrie" often plays out like an appointed B movie made for propagandistic reasons, after all movie stars were used to draft people during WWII and watching Tom Cruise battling the Nazis, although preposterous and somewhat disrespectful, still is able to engage the audience on a primal level.

When it comes to entertainment "Valkyrie" is an effective, if inconsequential, accomplished mission, as cinema it stays merely as a drill.

RocknRolla **

Director: Guy Ritchie
Cast: Gerard Butler, Tom Wilkinson
Mark Strong, Thandie Newton, Idris Elba, Tom Hardy, Jeremy Piven, Jimy Mistry

Tom Wilkinson seems to draw immense pleasure from unleashing his inner sleaze playing Lenny Cole, a London crime boss negotiating a multimillion deal with a Russian property dealer (Karel Roden).
There’s also One Two (a hilarious Butler), Mumbles (Elba) and “Handsome” Bob (the scene stealing Hardy) a group of crooks trying to intercept the money from the deal with the aid of a sly accountant (Newton). Add to this an allegedly dead junkie rock star named Johnny Quid (Kebbell), a stolen painting (and ingenious McGuffin), carnivorous crawfish and a duo of Russian hitmen. Put all of those characters, situations and items together and you end with this movie, where the plot is the last thing that matters, but that doesn’t keep Lenny’s assistant Archie (the wonderful Mark Strong who by far owns the movie with his mixture of tough and coolness) from trying to narrate everything.
Guy Ritchie has a knack for brutal comedy (and his writing isn’t half bad) that gives the movie its intense energy and entertainment value, but he also has some deep rooted issues that make the movie lack something.
One of them is his insistence with gay jokes; from Brad Pitt’s ultra toned physique in “Snatch”, to Adriano Giannini’s scruffy appeal in “Swept Away” Ritchie has a weird ability to capture the beauty of the male body that would make Derek Jarman’s eyebrows give an ironic raise (and who can blame him when he was married to the gay icon by excellence…).
In this film he makes one of his characters gay, but instead of using this to stereotyped, yet effective, comedy purposes he has several other characters become fascinated by what this homosexuality implies about them.
This discomfort would’ve been effective (gay crooks!?! A riot!) if the director wasn’t drawing unintentional homoerotic attention to random moments of the film.
Ritchie turns a chase sequence of ACME proportions into a Hugo Boss perfume ad by having a very fit thug take his shirt off to reveal his extremely ripped physique…in slow motion.
The same two characters will later become involved in a torture scene which includes gagging, policemen hats and vodka. And “I’m not gay” becomes almost a catchphrase within the movie.
Another of Ricthie’s problems is his need to create his own language and untie himself from other currents. While it’s immediately obvious that “RocknRolla” draws heavily from the filmographies of Tarantino, Scorsese and even the Rat Pack (going by way of Steven Soderbergh), Lenny often reminds other characters and the viewers that they aren’t gangsters.
This constant need of Ritchie to reaffirm his role, which here evokes vintage James Bond and Sam Peckinpah, only comes off looking as a slightly pathetic fear of being emasculated (again…he was married to Madonna, one can’t blame him entirely).
“RocknRolla” spends far too much time worrying about what it’s not that it ends up not knowing what it actually is.